PJ

2007-10-15T21:14:00.000-07:00

Rice touts 'most serious' Mideast peace efforts in years

Israel and Palestinian negotiators are involved in the most serious effort in "many, many years" to try to end the Mideast conflict, said U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Monday.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice meets Monday with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. "Frankly, it's time for the establishment of a Palestinian state and it's time for Israel to live in the security that is going to come with a peaceful and democratic neighbor," Rice said.

A day after meeting with Israeli leaders, Rice met in the West Bank with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and said she's pushing both sides to work "intensely" toward agreeing on a "serious, substantive and concrete" framework for a November peace conference in Annapolis, Maryland. During a joint news conference with Rice, Abbas indicated his negotiators have already agreed on some issues with Israel, but he did not specify which ones.

"The Palestinian and Israeli delegations have started the work in order to prepare the document," said Abbas. "And certainly before we go to Washington this document will be ready. Moderate Arab nations have not yet said they would attend the conference, according to The Associated Press. No date has been announced for the conference.

Rice described both sides as working with "great seriousness" and "great commitment" to avoid a conference that might prove fruitless. "We quite frankly have better things to do than invite people to Annapolis for a photo op," Rice said. "The very senior people that they have appointed to lead these delegations suggest to me that this is the most serious effort to try to end this conflict in many, many years," she said. Abbas said negotiators from both sides are working on a joint document "that would set the parameters and the foundations of the settlement of final status issues" such as Jerusalem, borders, settlements and refugees.

He said Palestinian negotiators are up against a fixed deadline and are "working very intensively and making every effort" to make the conference succeed. Both sides have been at odds over how specific the statement should be. The Palestinians seek an explicit timetable for final status issues and the Israelis prefer more general wording. The Associated Press reported on Sunday that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told his Cabinet he didn't regard the joint declaration of principles to be a prerequisite for the conference.

Rice said Monday that Palestinian concerns are a key part to ending the conflict, but the concerns don't necessarily need to be detailed in the framework agreement. "They're not going to try to solve everything in this November document, but it does need to be a serious, substantive and concrete document that can demonstrate that there is a way forward," she said.
The November conference "has to trigger the negotiations on the final status agreement," Rice said. That agreement with Israel "must involve looking to improve the lives of Palestinians economically, to improve the lives of the Palestinians in terms of movement and access." Rice said the United States "sees the establishment of a Palestinian state and a two-state solution as absolutely essential for the future, not just of Palestinians and Israelis but also for the Middle East and indeed to American interests."

2007-08-22T22:39:00.000-07:00

Where are the Armored vehicles?

The Pentagon will fall far short of its goal of sending 3,500 lifesaving armored vehicles to Iraq by the end of the year. Instead, officials expect to send about 1,500.

Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said Wednesday that while defense officials still believe contractors will build about 3,900 of the mine-resistant, armor-protected vehicles by year's end, it will take longer for the military to fully equip them and ship them to Iraq.

"Production is on pace, the issue is delivery," he said, adding that the lag is a disappointment and the Defense Department is still committed to getting as many of the vehicles to the war as quickly as possible.

The vehicles — known as MRAPs — have a special V-shaped hull that provides greater protection against roadside bombs. According to the military, no troops have been killed while riding in one.

Once the MRAPs are built, the military installs necessary military equipment — such as radios and radar — then sends them to Iraq. Right now that process is taking about 50 days, but officials hope to shorten that to a little more than a month.

Still, Morrell said that many of the MRAPs produced in November and December won't get to Iraq before the end of the year. He said getting 3,500 to the forces in Iraq by year's end was an "ambitious goal" but the revised estimate of 1,500 is more realistic now.

Currently many of the MRAPs are being flown to the Middle East, in an effort to get them into Iraq more quickly. But as production rates increase, the Pentagon is likely to send them by ship — which takes longer but is less expensive and can deliver many more at one time.

The contractors are Stewart and Stevenson Tactical Vehicle System LP, a division of Armor Holdings Inc.; BAE Systems Plc; Force Protection Industries Inc.; General Dynamics Corp.; and Navistar International Corp.'s subsidiary International Military and Government LLC.

Earlier this year, production was a problem in the Pentagon's struggle to get more MRAPs to Iraq. In a late June report, the Defense Department's inspector general found that the Pentagon awarded contracts for the vehicles to companies that failed to produce them on time, despite knowing that there were other contractors who could have supplied some more quickly. Force Protection Industries was one of the companies in the report noted for delays.

The report concluded that those earlier problems "resulted in increased risk to the lives of soldiers."

2007-07-15T23:35:00.000-07:00

United Nations inspectors have verified that North Korea has shut down its sole functioning nuclear reactor, the chief of the watchdog agency said Monday, confirming the isolated country had taken its first step in nearly five years to halt production of atomic weapons.

South Korea sent more oil to the North on Monday to reward its compliance with an international disarmament agreement.

"Our inspectors are there. They verified the shutting down of the reactor yesterday," said Mohamed ElBaradei, chief of the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency.

"The process has been going quite well and we have had good cooperation from North Korea. It's a good step in the right direction," ElBaradei said in Bangkok, where he was to attend an event sponsored by Thailand's Ministry of Science.

South Korean Unification Minister Lee Jae-joung said a second shipment of oil departed Monday for the North on a ship. A first shipment that arrived Saturday — prompting the North to follow through on its pledge to shut the reactor — has been completely offloaded, Lee said at a meeting with U.S. nuclear envoy Christopher Hill.

The two shipments are part of 50,000 tons of oil that the North will receive for the reactor shutdown. Under a February agreement at international arms talks, North Korea will receive a total equivalent of 1 million tons of oil for dismantling its nuclear programs.

A North Korean diplomat said Sunday that his country was willing to discuss disclosing the full extent of its nuclear programs as well as disabling them as long as the U.S. removed all sanctions against the impoverished country.

Hill said Monday during his meeting with Lee that Washington moving to remove the North's pariah status would depend on the North's continued compliance with its disarmament promises.

"With complete denuclearization, everything is going to be possible," Hill said.

The North said it shut down the reactor, which generates plutonium for atomic bombs, on Saturday. It was the first on-the-ground achievement toward scaling back the country's nuclear ambitions since an international standoff began in late 2002.

The North's Foreign Ministry said Sunday that further progress on disarmament would depend "on what practical measures the U.S. and Japan, in particular, will take to roll back their hostile policies toward" North Korea. North Korea wants normal relations with both countries.

The ministry noted that North Korea acted to shut down its nuclear reactor even before receiving all 50,000 tons of oil, adding that was "a manifestation of its good faith toward the agreement," according to a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.

Still, North Korea emphasized Sunday that it did not view the oil as aid and that the U.N. inspectors' activities were restricted in scope.

"The provision of substitute energy including heavy oil is by no means 'aid' in the form of charity but compensation for the (North's) suspension of its nuclear facilities and the activities of the IAEA in (Yongbyon) are not 'inspection' but limited to verification and monitoring," the ministry said.

North Korea is set to participate in a renewed session of six-party disarmament talks this week in Beijing along with China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the U.S.

Hill, a U.S. assistant secretary of state, has said the negotiations would focus on a "work plan and a timeframe" for how disarmament would proceed, adding he planned to meet his North Korean counterpart Tuesday ahead of the formal start of talks.

2007-06-03T00:24:00.000-07:00

Man says he captured Loch Ness on film

The Loch Ness monster is back — and there's video. A man has captured what Nessie watchers say is possible footage of the supposed mythical creature beneath Scotland's most mysterious lake.

"I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw this jet black thing, about 45 feet long, moving fairly fast in the water," said Gordon Holmes, the 55-year-old a lab technician from Shipley, Yorkshire, who took the video Saturday.

Nessie watcher and marine biologist Adrian Shine viewed the video and hoped to properly analyze it in the coming months.

"I see myself as a skeptical interpreter of what happens in the loch, but I do keep an open mind about these things and there is no doubt this is some of the best footage I have seen," said Shine, of the Loch Ness 2000 center in Drumnadrochit, on the shores of the lake.

Holmes said whatever it was moved at about 6 mph and kept a fairly straight course.

"My initial thought is it could be a very big eel, they have serpent-like features and they may explain all the sightings in Loch Ness over the years."

Loch Ness is surrounded by myth. It's the largest inland body of water in Britain, and at about 750 feet to the bottom, it's even deeper than the North Sea.

"There are a number of possible explanations to the sightings in the loch. It could be some biological creature, it could just be the waves of the loch or it could some psychological phenomenon in as much as we see what we want to see," Shine said.

While many sightings can be attributed to a drop of the local whisky, legends of Scottish monsters date back to one of the founders of the Christian church in Scotland, St. Columba, who wrote of them in about 565 A.D.

More recently, there have been more than 4,000 purported Nessie sightings since she was first caught on camera by a surgeon on vacation in the 1930s.

Since then, the faithful have speculated about it is a completely unknown species, a sturgeon — even though they have not been native to Scotland's waters for many years — or even a last surviving dinosaur.

Real or imagined, Nessie has long been a Scottish emblem. She has been the muse for cuddly toys and immortalized on T-shirts and posters showing her classic three-humped image.

The Orion Nebula

2007-05-20T23:24:00.000-07:00

The nebula's outermost layers of gas and dust appear as a grayish veil. The grayish-colored gas that forms a prominent curve from lower left to upper right can be thought of as the "rim" of a giant carved bowl. Descending into the bowl, we encounter a plateau-like region (reddish in color).
The bright central cavern takes us deeper yet. Called the Trapezium, it is the home of the four most massive stars in Orion. The light unleashed by these stars is carving a cavity around them and disrupting the growth of less massive stars.

What's in a name?
It is called “Orion” for its location and “Nebula” because it is a cloud of gas and dust. The nebula resides along a spiral arm of the Milky Way, in the middle of the sword region of the constellation Orion, the Hunter.

Orion the Hunter: The constellationthat containsthe nebula

Constellations are imaginary pictures in the sky that ancient civilizations created. By linking together the brightest stars that appear close to each other, they formed geometric patterns that represented features of gods, heroes, animals, and mythological creatures.
Often, ancient people created myths or stories about why these creatures appear in the sky. The constellation tales not only provided amusement but also helped the ancient astronomers remember the positions of the stars. Orion is one of the constellations that can be seen in the Northern Hemisphere’s winter sky.
Above and to the left of the bright central cavity is another smaller, bright region being sculpted by a young, massive star at its core.

2007-04-05T23:21:00.000-07:00

Eggs will raise your cholesterol

Avoid eggs. Drink 8 glasses of water a day. Eating carbs will make you fat. Nutritional advice such as this has been touted for years -- but is it accurate?
Not necessarily, according to Wendy Repovich, an exercise physiologist at Eastern Washington University in Cheyenne, Washington, who did her best to dispel several common nutrition misconceptions during an American College of Sports Medicine-sponsored health and fitness summit held recently in Dallas.
"Eating eggs will raise your cholesterol." This myth started because egg yolks have the most concentrated amount of cholesterol in any food, Repovich told Reuters Health. However, when eaten in moderation, eggs do not contain enough cholesterol to pose health risks, she said.

"Most people avoid eggs and probably if they have any kind of cardiovascular risk their physicians tell them to avoid eggs," Repovich said. "But really, there aren't a whole lot of studies that show that one or two eggs a day really make a difference to cholesterol levels."

"Eating carbohydrates makes you fat" is another myth. Cutting carbs from the diet may help a person shed pounds due to water loss from a decrease in carbohydrate stores, Repovich said, but eating carbs in moderation does not directly lead to weight gain.

Here's another myth. "Drink 8 glasses of water a day." Repovich said people need to replace water lost through breathing, urinating, sweating each day -- but that doesn't necessarily total 64 ounces of water.

"I see an awful lot of people carrying bottled water around," Repovich said. "I think people are still under the impression that they have to drink 8 glasses of water a day, but most people don't realize they get water from other sources in the diet."

And too much water can be harmful, Repovich warned, leading possibly to an imbalance in the body of sodium, a condition called hyponatremia.

It's also a myth, Repovich said, that everyone needs vitamin supplements, although she admits to popping a multivitamin each morning. People who eat a variety of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, along with moderate amounts of a variety of low-fat dairy and protein and the right quantity of calories, probably don't need a vitamin supplement, she said.

"But for the most part, we don't eat the way we should so probably a simple multivitamin is good for most people," Repovich said.

2007-04-04T21:12:00.000-07:00

Britons cheer sailors' freedom

Iran abruptly announced Wednesday that it would release 15 British sailors and marines after days of low-key British diplomacy, international pressure and U.S. moves helped defuse the crisis.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced the decision, calling it a "gift to the British people" for Easter and claiming that Britain had promised not to stray into Iranian waters again.

The 15 were to fly home today. In London, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said his government's "measured approach, firm but calm, not negotiating but not confronting either," led to freedom for the 15. They were seized at gunpoint in disputed Persian Gulf waters March 23.

At a news conference Wednesday in Tehran, Ahmadinejad pinned a medal on the Revolutionary Guard commander who seized the British, then announced they would go free and were being "pardoned." He said Iran received a letter from Britain pledging its forces would not re-enter Iranian waters.

The British Foreign Office declined to release the note. It has said its crew was in Iraqi waters when captured.

The end of the crisis came as the U.S. military announced it might permit an Iranian envoy to visit five Iranians in U.S. custody in Iraq since Jan. 11. Monday, an Iranian diplomat abducted in Baghdad by uniformed gunmen Feb. 4 was released. The United States had denied any role in that incident.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said, "We're pleased that these people have the prospect of being reunited with their families, but there have been no quid pro quos from the United States."

Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, in a telephone interview from Baghdad, also denied a link but conceded "the timing is interesting." He said Iraq has asked U.S. forces to release the five Iranians, who he said were processing travel permits for Iraqis to visit Iran and holding security talks with Iraqi Kurdish officials. Zebari said Iran would be reluctant to take part in an upcoming meeting on stabilizing Iraq unless the five were freed.

According to a U.S. military statement released after the five were detained in January, the Iranians are members of the elite Quds Force of Iran's Revolutionary Guards and were involved in providing deadly explosives to Iraqi Shiite militias.

Lt. Col. Christopher Garver, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, said the case is under "continuous review" and the United States is considering Zebari's request to allow an Iranian official to visit the five detainees. Garver said the five have been visited by a delegation from the International Red Cross that included an Iranian.

Iran's capture of the British sailors and marines was in part a reaction to the U.S. arrests of the suspected Guards members and the abduction of Iranian diplomat Jalal Sarafi in Baghdad, said Geoffrey Kemp, a Middle East expert at the Nixon Center, a think tank in Washington.

Kemp said the Tehran regime "milked this for all it was worth" and decided to release the British to avoid giving the United States and the Europeans reason to increase pressure against Iran over its nuclear program.

The United Nations Security Council has penalized Iran for its refusal to halt efforts to enrich uranium. European countries limit financial ties with the Islamic regime.

Seizing the British "damaged the prestige of Iran for ordinary people in Western countries," said Mohsen Sazegara, a founder of the Revolutionary Guards who is a dissident living in the USA.

Gary Sick, who was White House national security adviser during the hostage crisis in 1979-81 when Iran held 52 Americans for 444 days, said Iran will pay "a very heavy price" for a short-term tactical victory.

"The image of Iran as an unreliable power has been reinforced," he said. "The normal reaction to someone straying a mile into your waters is not to arrest him and hold him hostage and put him on television."

The seizure was controversial in Iran, where Ahmadinejad has been criticized for being too confrontational. "Tehran announced that it is ready to solve the British sailors' problem through negotiations and diplomacy," wrote an Iranian newspaper, Kargozaran, in an editorial Wednesday. "This, however, could have happened sooner to prevent the crisis from extending to the international community."

2007-03-05T23:56:00.000-08:00

Levitating high-speed trains, super-efficient power generators and ultra-powerful supercomputers would become commonplace thanks to a new breed of materials known as high temperature superconductors (HTSC).

"The breakthroughs in superconductivity bring us to the threshold of a new age," said President Regan. "It's our task to herald in that new age with a rush."

But 20 years on, the new world does not seem to have arrived. So what happened?

Early promise

Superconductivity was first discovered in 1911 by researchers at the University of Leiden who used solid mercury in their experiments. Superconductors have no electrical resistance, so unlike conventional conductors they allow an electric current to flow through without any loss.

Drs Mueller and Bednorz were awarded the Nobel prize in 1987

The 'Woodstock of Physics'

At the start, the phenomenon was only seen in materials cooled close to absolute zero, which according to theory is the state of zero heat energy. Three-quarters of a century later, the highest temperature achieved for the onset of superconductivity, the so-called transition temperature, was a frigid 23 Kelvin (-250C). This allowed scientists to exploit the phenomenon in specialist applications such as Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scanners and high energy physics particle colliders, cooled by liquid helium. But more day-to-day applications, such as replacing the electricity grid with superconducting wires, remained impossible without materials able to operate at higher temperatures.

Closer to zero

The breakthrough came in 1986. Two IBM researchers, Georg Bednorz and Alex Mueller, discovered a new family of ceramic superconductors, known as the copper oxide perovskites, that operated at 35K (-238C) The work was rapidly followed up Paul Chu, of the University of Houston, who discovered materials operating at 93K (-182C)
The material was not as simple as we originally thought

Paul Chu
The discovery meant that superconductors had entered the temperature range of liquid nitrogen (77K, -196C), an abundant and well understood coolant.

"All of a sudden everything was different," said Professor Chu. "There was a euphoric feeling. People in the field thought nothing was impossible."

The discovery prompted a huge gathering of physicists in New York to discuss the breakthrough, a meeting later called the "Woodstock of Physics".

Precise structure

But large-scale commercialisation of the technology would prove more difficult.
"The material was not as simple as we originally thought," said Professor Chu.

One of the first commercial uses of superconductors was MRI scanners
Despite an intensive two-decade search, the underlying mechanism of superconductivity in the ceramics is still disputed. In addition, their exact structure, requiring ultra-thin layers of different elements stacked on top of each other, means they are very difficult and expensive to manufacture. "Atomically, you have to line them up very precisely in order for the supercurrent to flow," explained Professor Chu. This, coupled with the fact that ceramics are brittle and difficult to turn into flexible wires and films, meant that prospects for immediate exploitation were not good.

"I think the expectations were a little unrealistic," said Dr Dennis Newns of IBM.

"The typical time it takes from inventing a new concept to application is 20 years," he said. "And that is exactly what we have seen."

Cool running

Companies in Japan, Europe, China, South Korea and the US are forging ahead with applications. In the US, American Superconductor has developed a way to "bend the unbendable", creating HTSC wires that can carry 150 times more electricity than the equivalent copper cables.

"Twenty years ago you would see people making ceramic fibres and trying to bend them and it was like a dry stick of spaghetti," said Greg Yurek, CEO and founder of the company.

HTS wire is much more compact than its copper equivalent

To get around this brittleness, the company embeds up to 85 tiny filaments of superconducting ceramic in a ribbon of metal 4.4mm (0.17 inches) wide. "Think of optical fibres," said Dr Yurek. "If you have a rod of glass and you whack it on your desk it will shatter. "Drop down to a fine optical fibre and it becomes flexible - it's the same principle here." The company also produces wires with a coating of the ceramic just one micron (millionth of a metre) thick on a metal alloy. Both are cooled by a sheath of liquid nitrogen. Short sections of the wires have already been installed in Columbus, Ohio, and a further half-mile of cable will soon be laid on Long Island, New York. In the short term, longer stretches of the supercooled cable will be difficult to install, as it requires an infrastructure to pump liquid nitrogen around the grid. But Dr Yurek believes that it will not be long before other firms start to offer utility companies these cryogenic services.

"This is the model they have used in the MRI industry to guarantee the cold," he said.

Shrinking motors

The company also promotes its HTSC wires for other advanced applications.
Central Japan Railways uses coils of it for their superconducting experimental magnetic levitation (maglev) train.

Japan's maglev set the world speed record for the technology

American Superconductor has also developed an electric motor using coils of superconducting wire for use in the next generation of US Navy destroyers. Electric motors are used by most commercial cruise liners, but are typically very bulky.

Using HTSC technology dramatically shrinks their size and also increases their efficiency.
The company is just about to start testing its latest 36.5-megawatt engine that is cooled by off-the-shelf liquid helium refrigerators and weighs 75 tonnes. By comparison, an engine based on copper wires would weigh 300 tonnes.

"That's great for cruise ships and the navy, because they can use that space for other things like passenger cabins or munitions," said Dr Yurek.

"New age"

Experimentally, things have also moved on. New superconductors have been found. For example, a new mercury-based compound has a transition temperature of 134K (-139C) "When we applied pressure we raised it up to 164K (-109C) - that's a record," said Professor Chu. "Of course from an application point of view, it's hopeless."
I think we're on a launching pad here and we're now ready to take off

Greg Yurek
However, other experimental work raises the possibility of discovering room temperature superconductors that would require no exotic cooling equipment.
A new theory, outlined in a paper in the journal Nature Physics by Dr Newns and his IBM colleague Dr Chang Tsuei, seeks to explain the elusive mechanism of superconductivity in the class of ceramics discovered in 1986. "We don't see any fundamental limits," said Dr Tsuei.
"If someone discovered a room-temperature superconductor tomorrow that fits with what is outlined by our theory, we wouldn't be surprised at all," added Dr Newns.

This kind of optimism, seen for the first time in the mid-1980s, now seems to be deserved.
There has been a crescendo of research, while at the same time the first commercial HTSC products are rolling out of factories.

According to Dr Yurek, this is a sign that the new age promised by Ronald Reagan is finally here.
"I think we're on a launching pad here and we're now ready to take off," he said.

2007-02-23T20:54:00.000-08:00

Judge mocked over Anna Nicole case

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - From the state that brought you the hanging chad, now comes the crying judge. Some members of the bar and other court-watchers are cringing over the way Judge Larry Seidlin wept — no, sobbed — on live, national TV as he announced a ruling Thursday in the dispute over where Anna Nicole Smith should be buried.
Some are accusing the brash former New York cab driver of showboating for the cameras, or worse, auditioning for his own courtroom TV show, with his one-liners, his personal asides, and his smart-alecky Bronx delivery during the six-day hearing.

They say that he let the hearing drag on way too long, that he made inappropriate jokes for a dispute over a body, that he acted as if it were all about him.

"He's like Judge Judy's wacky little brother," legal analyst Jefrey Toobin quipped on CNN.

The New York Post called him a "Weepy Wacko," while the Daily News asked, "How Low Can This Judge Go?" and referred to him as "Blubbering Seidlin." One of the Miami's most celebrated defense attorneys, Roy Black, said of the circus-like scene in Seidlin's courtroom: "I sort of think it gives circuses a bad name."

Black said he was torn between being entertained as a spectator and being horrified as a legal professional.

"I thought he was one of the most entertaining things I had ever seen. He could be a TV judge. He could be a stand-up comic. However, I think he makes a horrible judge," Black said. "He doesn't follow any of the rules or procedures."

In court, the 56-year-old Seidlin talked about his wife and divulged the minutiae of his days, mentioning his morning swim and the tuna sandwich he was having when assigned the case. He called Dr. Joshua Perper, the medical examiner, "Dr. Pepper." Lawyers became known by their home states of "Texas" or "California." The hearing often became a free-for-all, with the various parties talking at the same time.

On the last day of the hearing, Seidlin cut witnesses off altogether. From the bench, he freely aired his thoughts, including "I feel for you, Mama" to Smith's mother. And just when everyone was ready for testimony to spill into one final day, he issued his ruling.

In the end, though, Black said he agreed with Seidlin's tearful ruling that custody of Smith's body go to the court-appointed lawyer representing her 5-month-old baby, Dannielynn, and he said he thought the judge's emotions were genuine.

"I believe that he sincerely tried to do the right thing," he said. "But while the end result is correct, it made a mockery of the system of justice."

The baby's lawyer ultimately decided to have Smith buried in the Bahamas, which was what Seidlin had fervently wished for from the bench. That decision represented a defeat for Smith's mother, Virgie Arthur, who wanted to bury the starlet in her native Texas.

One of Arthur's attorneys, John O'Quinn, said of the judge: "The entire nation was watching him and so he wanted to do the most bizarre thing he could."

John Thompson, a Coral Gables lawyer, said Seidlin made a mockery of the judicial process.

"If this is how a Circuit Court judge is supposed to act," he said, "then the Florida Supreme Court should issue an order directing that henceforth sitting judges can wear not just robes but rather opt for the clownish outfit of a carnival barker."

Seidlin declined to comment Friday, saying it wouldn't be appropriate. His only hope might be that the whole thing will eventually go away.

"You're all done with me," he said as he prepared to make his ruling Thursday. "I'm not going to talk about this case ever again."

At one point earlier this week, Seidlin rejected some of the characterizations of his courtroom: "There's no circus here, my friend."

Seidlin does have his admirers, too, including the attorneys for Larry Birkhead, one of at least two men who claim to be the father of Smith's baby.

"Sometimes lightening up a little helps everyone relax," said one, Susan Brown.

Eve Preminger, a former New York judge, said Seidlin could have curtailed his comments and held back his feelings, but he shouldn't be criticized so intensely for it.

"I just don't think it's the worst sin a judge could commit," she said. "I'd rather have an overemotional judge who cares than a mean judge who doesn't. We judges are so concerned with our dignity that sometimes we lose sight of the human issues."

2007-02-19T23:18:00.001-08:00

How Rain and Snow Form

Not all raindrops are what you might think. Most of them, in fact, are never seen. Or, at least, they aren't seen until the very end of their life cycle.
Though a cloud might look like a giant cotton ball, it is actually made up of tiny ice crystals or water droplets that have condensed (turned from vapor to water) around even tinier bits of dust. Near the tops of clouds, even in summer, most of these little "raindrops" are ice rather than water, because it's so cold at the higher altitudes.
Clouds are often created when two different types of air masses run into each other -- a warm air mass and a cold air mass. Typically, the warm air gets pushed up over the cold air.
As warm air rises, condensation occurs; the air cools to a point where it will condense from the gas state into a water state. The rising air pulls the drop up, where it may freeze. All the while, more water is condensing onto it (or freezing onto it, a process called sublimation). So the drop gets bigger.

Finally, the updraft dies out and/or the drop is heavy enough to fall. When it falls, it may or may not turn from ice back into water. And it may get caught in another updraft and go through the whole cycle again. When this happens, the raindrop (or ice pellet) can get very large. This is how strong storms (where the air is going up and down rapidly and violently) create those huge raindrops or huge hailstones.
Eventually, the raindrop or hunk of ice is large enough that gravity overcomes whatever updrafts are in the system, and the raindrop, or whatever it has become, falls to Earth.
On the way down, it may melt or freeze, which determines what we finally call it when it hits the ground.

2007-02-06T21:23:00.000-08:00

Car industry facing 18% CO2 cut

Transport produced 28% of the EU's CO2 emissions in 2004The European Commission is proposing forcing carmakers to make an 18% cut in CO2 emissions from new cars by 2012.
A spokesman said the commission was aiming for a 25% cut in car emissions overall, with the "bulk of the effort" coming from better motor technology.
The rest of the cut is expected to be achieved by measures such as greater use of biofuels and better tyres.
Details of the plan, which has divided the commission, are being unveiled on Wednesday after a two-week delay.
Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas had wanted to oblige carmakers to achieve the full 25% emissions cut alone, but ran into strong opposition from the German car industry and Industry Commissioner Guenter Verheugen.
Missed targets
Industry sources say Mr Dimas's proposal would have pushed up the cost of a new car by 2,500 euros (£1,640), though other studies suggested the increase would be as low as 600 euros (£400).

No end to CO2 fight
Carmakers fail green test
Reports from Brussels say the commission will propose a package of measures designed to bring emissions from the average new car down to 120g of CO2 per kilometre by 2012 - 25% below the 2005 level of 162g/km.
Carmakers would be responsible for getting emissions down to 130g/km through the use of better car technology, under the commission proposal.
Increased use of biofuels, better tyres and measures to ensure drivers change gear at the right time would help to save the extra 10g/km.
European carmakers agreed in 1998 to aim for average emissions of 140g/km by 2008/9, but are no longer expected to meet this target.
The EU originally wanted to get emissions under 120g/km by 2005, but the deadline slipped to 2012.
The commission last week announced proposals designed to increase the use of biofuels, and to reduce the amount of CO2 emitted in the production of fuels.
'No justification'
The European car industry says consumers have so far shown little interest in cars with smaller engines and lower emissions.
Now they have failed to do the job they agreed to do, it makes no sense to let them off the hook
Aat PeterseTransport and Environment
Brussels presses for greener fuels It also says there are more cost-efficient ways of reducing transport emissions than introducing costly new technology, such as reducing traffic congestion and changing driver behaviour.
But Aat Peterse of the environmental group Transport and Environment said there was no justification for abandoning the 120g/km target, which car manufacturers had known about for 10 years.
"Now they have failed to do the job they agreed to do, it makes no sense to let them off the hook," he added.
Transport is the only sector in Europe that has shown dramatic increases in CO2 emissions over the last 15 years.
The car industry has made huge improvements in engine efficiency, but the power, size and weight have cars have also increased rapidly.
As a result, CO2 emissions have only fallen by 23g/km from the 1995 level of 185g/km.
Legislation on the basis of Wednesday's proposal is unlikely to be drafted until 2008.

2007-01-07T00:53:00.000-08:00

Vulcan: The Planet

Alas, poor Pluto. Demoted last year to dwarf planet status -- not really a planet after all. At least its "day in the sun" lasted for 75 years. We bid it a fond farewell as we pluck it out of the solar system mobile from our fourth-grade science project. Now consider the tragic story of Vulcan. It began its life in 1859 as a calculus equation when French mathematician Urbain Le Verrier tried to account for Mercury's deviation from its predicted orbit. Was it caused by a new planet? After all, Neptune was discovered this way. Over the years, scientists and amateur astronomers joined in the search for the hypothetical planet, but Mercury's proximity to the sun made it difficult to view. Was it just a sunspot or an asteroid? It was a moot point by 1915 when Einstein announced his General Theory of Relativity. It neatly explained the wibble in Mercury's wobble and later viewings during an eclipse confirmed it. There was no planet Vulcan. Ah, fleeting fame!

2006-12-29T21:29:00.000-08:00

Saddam Hussein executed for war crimes

Saddam Hussein' the shotgun-waving dictator who ruled Iraq with a remorseless brutality for a quarter-century and was driven from power by a U.S.-led war that left his country in shambles, was taken to the gallows clutching a Quran and hanged Saturday.
In Baghdad's Shiite enclave of Sadr City, people danced in the streets while others fired guns in the air to celebrate the former dictator's death. The government did not impose a round-the-clock curfew as it did last month when Saddam was convicted to thwart any surge in retaliatory violence.
It was a grim end for the 69-year-old leader who had vexed three U.S. presidents. Despite his ouster, Washington, its allies and the new Iraqi leaders remain mired in a fight to quell a stubborn insurgency by Saddam loyalists and a vicious sectarian conflict.
President Bush' called Saddam's execution "the kind of justice he denied the victims of his brutal regime."

2006-12-24T00:36:00.000-08:00

UN passes Iran nuclear sanctions

The resolution achieved rare unanimous support
The United Nations Security Council has unanimously voted to impose sanctions against Iran over its failure to halt uranium enrichment.
The sanctions ban the supply of nuclear-related technology and materials and impose an asset freeze on key individuals and companies. The US representative warned that Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons would make it less, not more, secure. Iran says its programme is for peaceful purposes and has vowed to continue. If necessary, we will not hesitate to return to this body if Iran does not take further steps to comply. The resolution demands that Tehran end all uranium enrichment work, which can produce fuel for nuclear plants as well as for bombs.

The vote by the 15-member council took place exactly two months after Britain, France and Germany first introduced a draft resolution proposing sanctions.
The draft resolution was amended several times after objections from both the Russians and Chinese. But after parts of the resolution were watered down, both Russia and China - who have close financial ties with Iran - backed the proposals. The resolution, under Chapter Seven of Article 41 of the UN Charter, makes enforcement obligatory but limits action to non-military measures. But acting US ambassador to the UN, Alejandro Wolff, said the resolution sent a strong warning that there would be serious repercussions to Iran's continued defiance of the international community.
"If necessary, we will not hesitate to return to this body if Iran does not take further steps to comply," Mr Wolff said.

'Strong message'
Iran's foreign ministry spokesman, Mohammad Ali Hosseini, condemned the resolution as illegal.
He told state-run television that the decision "cannot affect or limit Iran's peaceful nuclear activities but will discredit the decisions of the Security Council, whose power is deteriorating."
Hours before the vote, US President George W Bush spoke to Russia's Vladimir Putin and discussed the issue, agreeing on the importance of a unified stance.
In a statement before the Security Council, Russia's ambassador to the UN, Vitaly Churkin, emphasised that the resolution did not authorise the use of force. But he said the sanctions sent a "strong message" to Iran about the need to comply with the UN's nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The text was watered down to take account of Russian concerns over such provisions as a freeze on the assets abroad of specific Iranian individuals and organisations. Russia is building a nuclear power station in Iran and China has significant oil interests there. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has threatened to reconsider relations with those countries which support sanctions.

2006-12-19T22:17:00.000-08:00

New bird flu outbreak in Vietnam

Bird flu has killed 42 people in Vietnam since 2003 (Source: WHO)
Vietnam has confirmed a lethal H5N1 bird flu outbreak among its domestic poultry in the south of the country.
Some 5,500 ducks and 500 chickens have died in the last two weeks in two provinces on the Mekong Delta, health ministry officials said.

The government said there was "an extremely high risk" of it spreading widely in the delta region.

Vietnam has been free of human cases of bird flu for a year, following a large culling and vaccination drive.

In the latest cases, all the poultry found dead were hatched illegally in the provinces of Ca Mau and Bac Lieu, health officials said.

"The risk of bird flu widely spreading in the Mekong delta is extremely high because farmers have thrown dead poultry into water channels for a long time," the Animal Health Department said in a report.

Bird flu first arrived in the Mekong delta in late 2003 and has since killed 42 people in the country.

As of 29 November 2006, the World Health Organization confirmed 258 cases of H5N1 in humans worldwide, leading to 154 deaths.

2006-12-10T20:58:00.000-08:00

Study: Fewer inmates on death row in '05

Fewer prison inmates were moved to death row in 2005, according to a federal study that shows one more person was executed than in the year before.
Four states — California, Texas, Florida and Pennsylvania — held half of the 3,254 inmates awaiting execution at the end of 2005, the study by the Bureau of Justice Statistics showed. There were 37 death row inmates in federal prisons at that time.

Sixteen states executed 60 prisoners last year, one more inmate than in 2004

Overall, however, the number of inmates on death row on Dec. 31, 2005, or the number of inmates moved there during the year dipped.

Among the findings by the Justice Department agency:

•128 inmates were moved to death row in 2005, the third consecutive year with a decline in year-long totals. It was the lowest number of prisoners put on death row since 1973.

•Sixty-six fewer inmates were on death row at the end of 2005 than in 2004. That was a decrease for the fifth straight year and about a 10% drop since Dec. 31, 2000, when there were 3,601 death row prisoners nationwide.

The Justice Department data, the most recent available, confirmed similar trends over the past five years as identified by Amnesty International USA, which opposes the death penalty.

Sue Gunawardena-Vaughn, director of the group's Program to Abolish the Death Penalty, said the drop in part reflects the public's squeamishness in approving executions for people who ultimately may be found innocent.

Since 1973, when watchdog groups began keeping track, 123 death row inmates have been cleared of crimes that had earned them death sentences.

Juries "don't want to be culpable for possibly putting an innocent person to death," Gunawardena-Vaughn said.

Moreover, because of lengthy trials and inevitable years of appeals in capital murder cases, the death penalty is expensive and "dilutes very, very crucial resources — many of which could be put toward more policing or mental health programs," she said.

As of the beginning of this month, 52 inmates have been executed so far in 2006, according to data provided by the Washington-based Death Penalty Information Center.

Thirty-eight states and the federal government allow juries to consider the death penalty in the most heinous criminal cases. All states except Nebraska allow lethal injection in executions. Inmates in Nebraska and eight other states can be electrocuted. Additionally, three states allow death by hanging, another three by firing squad and four by lethal gas.

At the end of last year, 56% of death row inmates were white and 42% were black, the Justice Department study reported. Women accounted for 2% of those people facing execution.

2006-12-10T20:55:00.000-08:00

The orbiting Discovery crew started the meticulous inspection of the shuttle's heat shield on Sunday, looking for any possible damage from liftoff.
Mission specialist Nicholas Patrick maneuvered the shuttle's 50-foot robotic arm and similarly long boom with cameras and sensors as the exam began on the spacecraft's right wing.
thorough sweep will examine the wings and nose cap for chips and other damage from foam, a procedure made mandatory after the deadly Columbia accident in 2003. The survey began 3:08 p.m. and was expected to last 5 1/2 hours.
During tests late Saturday, the robotic arm's latching mechanism was not working automatically, so Patrick manually ordered the arm to grasp the boom. Otherwise, the inspection was without incident. Engineers are examining the camera images in real time and also will review them in greater detail later on.
Preliminary radar reports from Discovery's launch showed nothing of concern, NASA spokesman Kyle Herring said.
Meanwhile, the other crewmembers checked on the spacesuits that will be used during the mission's three spacewalks.
Discovery fired its engines Sunday to raise its altitude to 216 miles above Earth, nearly level with the international space station, where it will dock Monday afternoon.
Then the real work begins.
The first spacewalk on the 12-day mission will involve installing an $11 million addition to the space lab, while the second and third will be for rewiring the station from its temporary power system to the permanent one. The solar power arrays that were brought up during the last mission will be used for the first time after that reconfiguration is complete.
Discovery's crew will bring home one of the space station's three crewmembers, German astronaut Thomas Reiter of the European Space Agency. American astronaut Sunita "Suni" Williams will replace him, staying for six months.
Robert Curbeam will spacewalk three times. Other crewmembers are commander Mark Polansky, pilot William Oefelein, and mission specialists Patrick, Williams, Joan Higginbotham and the European Space Agency's Christer Fuglesang, the first Swede in space.
Five of Discovery's astronauts, including Patrick, are first-timers to space.
They woke up on their first morning in zero gravity to a transmission from Houston of The Beatles' "Here Comes the Sun," an allusion by flight control to how the shuttle lit up the nighttime sky during its ascent Saturday.
"Good morning, Discovery. We especially want to thank you for the burst of sunshine you brought into our lives last night. It was an awesome launch," Shannon Lucid from Mission Control radioed up to the crew.
"It was pretty great for all of us, too," Polansky responded.
NASA had required daytime launches for the first three flights after Columbia, but now feels comfortable with the improvements made since then.
The Columbia disintegrated while re-entering the atmosphere, killing the crewmembers.

2006-12-10T20:50:00.000-08:00

The Iraqi president on Sunday sharply criticized the bipartisan U.S. report calling for a new approach to the war, saying it contained dangerous recommendations that would undermine his country's sovereignty and were "an insult to the people of Iraq."

President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd and one of the staunchest U.S. supporters within the Iraqi leadership, also said U.S. training of Iraq's army and police had gone "from failure to failure."

He criticized the recommendation by the Iraq Study Group calling for increasing the number of U.S. troops embedded with Iraqi units to train Iraq's forces from 3,000 to 4,000 currently to 10,000 to 20,000.

"It is not respecting the desire of the Iraqi people to control its army and to be able to rearm and train Iraqi forces under the leadership of the Iraqi government," he said during an interview with several reporters in his office in Baghdad.

Talabani was the most senior government official to take a stand against the report, which has also come under sharp criticism from American conservatives who claim it amounts to a veiled surrender in the war against terror.

Outgoing Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, in a surprise farewell visit to U.S. troops in Iraq this weekend, said the consequences of the war's failure would be "unacceptable."

"We feel great urgency to protect the American people from another 9/11 or a 9/11 times two or three. At the same time, we need to have the patience to see this task through to success. The consequences of failure are unacceptable," Rumsfeld said at al-Asad air base in western Iraq. "The enemy must be defeated."

Talabani said the Iraqi government planned to send a letter to President Bush "expressing our views about the main issues" in the report. He would not elaborate.

"I believe that President George Bush is a brave and committed man and he is adamant to support the Iraqi government until they've reached success," Talabani said. He said setting conditions was "an insult to the people of Iraq."

Talabani's criticism of U.S. training was directed at a key part of the study group's recommendation, which called for accelerated training of Iraqi forces and the withdrawal of most U.S. combat troops by the first quarter of 2008.

Some U.S. military experts have expressed concern that Iraqi forces will not be ready to assume full responsibility for the fighting by then. However, opposition to the war is rising within the United States, increasing pressure on Bush to shift strategy.

A roadside bomb killed one U.S. soldier and wounded another Sunday west of Baghdad, the military said. The death raised to 43 the number of troops who have died this month and pushed the total U.S. military death toll to 2,931 since the war started nearly four years ago.

Talabani said the 2008 date was realistic if the Iraqi government is given more responsibility for security.

"If we can agree with the U.S. government to give us the right of organizing, training, arming our armed forces, it will be possible in 2008 (for U.S.-led forces) to start to leave Iraq and to go back home," he said.

"If you read this report, one would think that it is written for a young, small colony that they are imposing these conditions on," Talabani said. "We are a sovereign country."

He also pointed to the report's call for the approval of a law that would allow thousands of officials from Saddam Hussein's ousted Baath party to return to their jobs.

Meanwhile, sectarian violence raged on the streets of Baghdad on Sunday, with a fresh outburst of retaliatory attacks and clashes between Shiites and Sunnis. At least 83 people were killed or found dead throughout the country, including 59 bullet-riddled bodies that turned up in Baghdad.

Late Saturday, gunmen attacked two Shiite homes in western Baghdad, killing nine men and seriously wounding another, police said. Nobody claimed responsibility for the attack, which police said occurred in the mostly Sunni Arab al-Jihad neighborhood, but it apparently was in retaliation for a bold assault earlier in the day against Sunnis.

Witnesses said Shiite militiamen entered a Sunni enclave in Hurriyah — a predominantly Shiite neighborhood — after Sunnis warned the few Shiites living there to leave or be killed. Heavy machine gun fire was heard on Saturday and three columns of black smoke rose into the sky, the witnesses said on condition of anonymity, also out of concern for their own safety.

Baghdad has been suffering from a series of attacks aimed at driving Sunnis or Shiites out of neighborhoods of the capital where they form a minority. Omar Abdul-Sattar, a member of the Sunni Arab Iraqi Islamic Party, said Sunday that an organized effort was under way in Hurriyah to force Sunnis out, and he accused Iraq's Shiite-led government of doing little to stop the violence.

Abdul-Sattar claimed that during the past five months, more than 300 Sunni families have been displaced from Hurriyah, more than 100 Sunnis killed and 200 wounded, and at least five Sunni mosques burned, along with houses and shops.

Clashes also erupted between Sunni and Shiite militants in Baghdad's mixed western Amil district, a policeman said. One Shiite militiaman was killed and six people — five Sunnis and one Shiite — were wounded, the officer said on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to talk to the media.

The fighting ended with U.S. and Iraqi forces rushing to the area to contain it, he said.

Rumsfeld, casually dressed in a gray jacket and an open-collar shirt, traveled to several different U.S. bases in the country on Sunday, shaking hands and joking with troops.

"For the past six years, I have had the opportunity and, I would say, the privilege, to serve with the greatest military on the face of the Earth," Rumsfeld said to more than 1,200 soldiers and Marines at al-Asad, a sprawling air base in western Anbar province, an insurgent stronghold.

Rumsfeld did not meet with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki during his visit. He kept the trip low-profile, with his office declining to discuss his itinerary or schedule in detail for security reasons. He returned to Washington Sunday night, Pentagon spokesman Eric Ruff said.

2006-11-10T01:32:00.000-08:00

Key Republican joins Dems opposing Bolton nomination

This is probably not what President Bush had in mind when he stressed bipartisanship after the Democratic Party's midterm elections sweep.

A key Senate Republican has joined Democrats in opposing one of Bush's initiatives for the lame-duck Congress: John Bolton's nomination as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

With leaders from both parties promising a new bipartisan Washington, Bush began efforts to get two of his most controversial decisions approved before the Democrats take over.

Along with Bolton's nomination, Bush said he would like to move forward on legislation to retroactively authorize the National Security Agency's domestic surveillance program.

Bush said he would like to see action on both issues before year's end. The Democratic-controlled Congress begins its term in January.

But Republican Sen. Lincoln Chafee, who was defeated in this week's election, said he would block Bolton's nomination.

Chafee, a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, told reporters that he did not believe Bolton's nomination would move forward without his support.

"The American people have spoken out against the president's agenda on a number of fronts, and presumably one of those is on foreign policy," the Rhode Island moderate told The Associated Press.

"And at this late stage in my term, I'm not going to endorse something the American people have spoke out against."

The committee, dominated 10-8 by Republicans, requires a majority vote to send the nomination to the Senate floor. A tie would be the same as a no vote.

After failing to get a Senate vote for Bolton's nomination, Bush made the appointment in August 2005 during a Congressional recess. (Full story)

Bolton's appointment will expire in January unless the Senate confirms him, and the probable next chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee says approval is unlikely.

"I see no point in considering Mr. Bolton's nomination again in the Foreign Relations Committee because, regardless of what happens there, he is unlikely to be considered by the full Senate," said Democratic Sen. Joe Biden, who is set to become the committee's chairman and control the agenda in January.

Last year Democrats launched a heated debate about Bolton as they blocked a vote on his nomination.

They complained he gave the Senate false information when he failed to note on a questionnaire that he had been questioned by the department's inspector general as part of a joint inquiry by the State Department and CIA into allegations that Iraq attempted to obtain uranium from Niger in Africa.

The State Department acknowledged the error in Bolton's statement.

Also, Sen. George Voinovich, an Ohio Republican, took to the floor and read a list of complaints by Bolton's subordinates who said he had a reputation of bullying his colleagues, taking facts out of context and exaggerating intelligence.

Carl Ford, the former chief of the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, called Bolton "a quintessential kiss-up, kick-down sort of guy" and a "serial abuser" of subordinates.

Bush to meet with Reid, Durbin
The president Thursday also outlined some other issues he'd like to see Congress address before year's end, and had lunch with the likely new speaker of the House of Representatives, California Democrat Rep. Nancy Pelosi. (Transcript)

Among those issues are the Terrorist Surveillance Act of 2006, bipartisan energy legislation, trade legislation, a federal spending bill and an agreement with India on civilian nuclear technology.

The Terrorist Surveillance Act is likely to face stiff opposition in the Senate and House, and has drawn objections from members of both parties.

In August, a federal judge in Michigan declared the program unconstitutional. That ruling was appealed, but Justice Department officials do not expect a ruling until next year.

The legislation would authorize the NSA to eavesdrop on phone calls between people in the United States and suspected terrorists overseas without a court order.

Aides to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales indicated he is likely to be making public appearances to push for passage in coming days.

Before his lunch date with Pelosi, Bush lined up his Cabinet for a photo opportunity and spoke to reporters about a meeting he has scheduled Friday with two Democrats who will lead the Senate come January -- Sens. Harry Reid of Nevada and Richard Durbin of Illinois. (Watch Bush's plans for Congress before GOP cedes control -- 3:10 )

"We'll discuss the way forward for our country, and I'm going to tell them what I just told our Cabinet. It is our responsibility to put the elections behind us and work together on the great issues facing America," Bush said.

"The American people expect us to rise above partisan differences, and my administration will do its part."

At a news conference celebrating his party's return to control in the Senate, Durbin on Thursday vowed: "We can come together on a bipartisan basis to solve the real problems facing our country."

But he also dismissed the president's plans for the lame-duck Congress, the AP reported.

"For a Republican Congress to have gone forward for two years and produced so little, and then for the president to come up with a huge agenda for the next two weeks, you have to ask him, 'Why didn't you use some of the time you spent arguing on some less important issues before?'" Durbin said.

2006-11-10T01:30:00.000-08:00

Ed Bradley of '60 Minutes' dies of leukemia

Ed Bradley, the longtime "60 Minutes" correspondent whose probing questions and deceptively relaxed interviewing manner graced some of that show's most notable reports, has died. He was 65.

Bradley died Thursday at New York's Mount Sinai Hospital of leukemia, according to staff members at the CBS program.

Bradley joined "60 Minutes" during the 1981-82 season after two years as White House correspondent for CBS News and three years at "CBS Reports." His reporting over the years won him a Peabody Award, 19 Emmys and a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award, among many others. He was honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Association of Black Journalists.

His most recent Emmy was for a segment about the reopening of the 1950s racial murder case of Emmett Till in Mississippi.

Katie Couric, in announcing the death of Bradley on CBS, described him as "smooth, cool, a great reporter, beloved and respected by all of his colleagues here at CBS News." (Watch as Couric gives the details of Bradley's death -- 1:22 )

"Bradley could cover any kind of a story," said Bradley's "60 Minutes" colleague Mike Wallace, singling out a profile of Lena Horne as "one of the most entertaining profiles I've ever seen."

"He traveled the world. He was in the White House. Bradley was just a damn good reporter," Wallace said.

CNN correspondent and former CBS reporter John Roberts said the newsman was "always a person you could sit down with and he could keep you intrigued for hours at a time with the stories he could tell."

Roberts called Bradley a "first-rate" journalist.

"He clearly was a field reporter," said Howard Kurtz, media reporter for The Washington Post. "He did not want to be chained to a desk." Kurtz also hosts CNN's "Reliable Sources."

"He was somebody who liked being out there on the story, whether it was in the Vietnam War or whether it was doing investigative work or bringing alive the plight of families who were dealing with illnesses or violence or other issues he covered," Kurtz added. (Watch Kurtz share his thoughts on Bradley -- 3:42 )

'You can be anything you want, kid'
Bradley was known for his thoughtful, mellifluous voice and often laid-back approach, a style that often prompted unexpected emotion in his subjects.

In 2000, he conducted the only television interview with condemned Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, who described his anger and bitterness after fighting in the Gulf War. Three years later, Bradley interviewed Michael Jackson, who said he had been "manhandled" when arrested on child molestation charges a few weeks earlier.

Roberts, who said he didn't know about Bradley's illness, described his former co-worker's excitement and awe at being able to interview heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali after the boxer put him off for a while.

Bradley told Roberts he felt Ali was playing a kind of game with him.

According to Roberts, Bradley told him, "He [Ali] said he didn't want to talk. Maybe today, maybe not today. I don't know."

"Bradley told me Ali had this twinkle in his eye that said, 'Yes, I do want to talk to you. I just want to do it on my own time.' And I think for Ed, that was probably one of the most memorable interviews that he's ever done."

Bradley, a great music lover, also interviewed Miles Davis, Lena Horne and Paul Simon, among other performers. He once moonlighted as a disc jockey, earning $1.50 an hour spinning records while working as a teacher by day. In his later years, he hosted the radio show "Jazz at Lincoln Center."

"The idea that I could go to a station and open the cabinet doors of what we called the library and pull out music present and past and play what I liked to play, music I liked to hear, and that there were people out there listening to my taste in music -- man, it just didn't get better than that," he told the online publication All About Jazz in 2004.

Bradley was born June 22, 1941. He grew up in a tough section of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he once recalled that his parents worked 20-hour days at two jobs apiece, according to The Associated Press. "I was told, 'You can be anything you want, kid,' " he once told an interviewer. "When you hear that often enough, you believe it."

Bradley began his career in radio at WDAS in his hometown in 1963. In 1967, he moved to New York and radio station WCBS, and then joined CBS News as a stringer in the Paris, France, bureau in 1971.

After a stint in Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City), Vietnam, he came to Washington in 1974. He covered Jimmy Carter's presidential campaign in 1976, then became CBS' first African-American White House correspondent.

CNN's David Fitzpatrick, a former CBS producer who worked with Bradley, said there were tears in the halls of CBS News after word came of his passing.

"He was gracious," Fitzpatrick said. "He would always have a smile."

Bradley is survived by his wife, Patricia Blanchet.

2006-10-18T23:48:00.000-07:00

House clerk warned GOP about Foley years ago

Former House Clerk Jeff Trandahl repeatedly raised red flags about former Rep. Mark Foley years before GOP leaders said they knew about Foley's inappropriate conduct with pages, sources said.
Trandahl's lawyers said he is scheduled to testify Thursday before the House Ethics Committee, which is investigating the Foley case.
Two sources close to Trandahl told CNN that he had been monitoring Foley's interaction with pages after being told of troubling behavior by the congressman in the House cloakroom and elsewhere. Trandahl took his concerns to Kirk Fordham, Foley's former chief of staff, many times, the sources said.
Fordham testified last week that he warned House Speaker Dennis Hastert's chief of staff, Scott Palmer, at least three years ago about Foley's conduct, according to a source familiar with Fordham's version of events.
Palmer has denied Fordham's account.
Foley resigned September 29 after details of alleged sexually explicit instant messages to teenage boys who had served as Capitol Hill pages became public.
Trandahl, who was House clerk from 1998 to 2005, oversaw the page program and had day-to-day authority over the teens. Former colleagues describe him as a by-the-book manager who took his job seriously.
A friend, Craig Shniderman, told CNN that if Trandahl was aware of something improper, he would have reported it.
"Jeff is a guy who always does the right thing," Shniderman said. "He lives by the truth. He lives by one truth. He's not a man that tells different stories to different people."
Also slated to go before the committee Thursday is House Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, who said earlier this month that Hastert had told him the concerns about Foley had been "taken care of."
Page's sponsor testifies
Rep. Rodney Alexander, the congressman who warned House leaders about Foley's e-mails to a teenage boy from his district, testified before the Ethics Committee on Wednesday.
The Louisiana Republican said he wants to know who else knew about Foley's behavior.
Alexander spent about three hours testifying about Foley's contacts with teenage pages and how the chamber's Republican leadership handled concerns about Foley.
"We told them what we know, when we knew it, and what we did about it, and we are looking forward and hoping that the committee will talk to others," Alexander said. "It's quite apparent from some of the reports out there that there are many people that know what we know and have known it for a lot longer period of time than we've known."
Alexander has said his office warned House leaders in 2005 about non-explicit but "overly friendly" e-mails Foley sent to a boy Alexander sponsored as a page. That has led to investigations by the House Ethics Committee and the Justice Department.
The heads-up from Alexander's office also resulted in a private rebuke of Foley from Trandahl and Illinois Rep. John Shimkus, the Republican chairman of the House Page Board.
Alexander's constituent reported receiving e-mail from Foley in late 2005, according to an account released by Hastert's office after the scandal broke. The e-mails, which the boy called "sick," included Foley's request for a picture and a question about what he wanted for his birthday.
"The pages from the past that have come forward now with testimony, you know, I'd like to know who their member of Congress was," Alexander said. "Who sponsored them? What did they know? Why didn't they reveal if they knew anything? So, there are some very important questions that the committee has yet to get answers to."
Both Alexander and the boy's family have said that they wanted the contact to stop but did not want the issue made public. Alexander said Wednesday that the boy was not aware of the more explicit instant messages to other teens, and he said the teen's parents "have been almost physically sick about the attention that he's gotten unfairly."
"We just look forward to the committee continuing their investigation, and hopefully this will come to a conclusion and we can move on with other things," he said.

2006-10-18T23:47:00.000-07:00

Sad McCartney pleads for privacy

Former Beatle Paul McCartney has defended himself against allegations of mistreatment allegedly made by his estranged wife, former model Heather Mills.
The couple is in divorce proceedings.
"Since the breakdown of his marriage, Sir Paul McCartney has maintained his silence in not commenting on the media stories, believing that it was best for all concerned, particularly his children, for there to be some dignity in what is a private matter," the musician's spokesman, Paul Freundlich, said in a written statement.
"Our client would very much like to respond in public and in detail to the allegations made recently against him by his wife and published in the press but he recognizes, on advice, that the only correct forum for his response to the allegations made against him is in the current divorce proceedings. Our client will be defending these allegations vigorously and appropriately.
"Our client is saddened by the breakdown of his marriage and requests that his family is allowed to conduct their personal affairs out of the media spotlight for the sake of everybody involved."
The charges were published in the British tabloid Daily Mail and the Evening Standard, which described them as extracts from court documents filed by the former model.
The law firm representing Heather Mills McCartney told CNN that court documents had been filed, but it would not say whether the documents cited by the newspapers were legitimate. CNN has not been able to determine their authenticity.
The couple has a 2-year-old daughter.
The 64-year-old musician has won 13 Grammy Awards and one Academy Award.
He and Heather Mills, 38, married four years ago. They announced their separation in May.
People Magazine has estimated McCartney's worth at more than $1.6 billion.
He has said he did not ask Mills to sign a prenuptial agreement because he thought it would be "unromantic."
The musician's first wife, Linda McCartney, died of breast cancer in 1998.

2006-10-18T23:46:00.000-07:00

A federal judge on Tuesday delayed next week's execution of cult leader Jeffrey Lundgren to allow him to join a lawsuit by five other death row inmates challenging the state's use of lethal injection.
In his request to join the lawsuit, Lundgren, 56, said he is at even greater risk of experiencing pain and suffering during the procedure than other inmates because he is overweight and diabetic.
Similar lawsuits filed in several states have led to the halting of executions in Missouri, Delaware and New Jersey.
Opponents have argued that the use of the lethal injection is unconstitutionally cruel and painful and that the procedure is often carried out without specifically trained medical personnel present.
But Ohio's method of lethal injection came under national scrutiny by death penalty opponents in May after problems slowed the execution of another inmate who was a former intravenous drug user and the vein the execution team chose collapsed as the chemicals started flowing.
While Judge Gregory Frost issued an order temporarily delaying Lundgren's execution, he said it appears to him that potential flaws with Ohio's execution process could easily be corrected.
"Thus, any delay in carrying out Lundgren's execution should and can be minimal," Frost said.
State Attorney General Jim Petro will appeal the ruling to the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati, said spokesman Mark Anthony.
Lundgren's sentence stems from a conviction for the fatal shooting of a family of five in 1989. The family, which included three children, were killed while they stood in a pit dug inside his barn in northeast Ohio.
Lundgren formed a cult after he was dismissed in 1987 as a lay minister of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, now known as the Community of Christ.
He said passages in the Bible told him to kill the family. Several witnesses said the family was not as enthusiastic about the cult as Lundgren would have liked.
The family he killed had moved from Missouri in 1987 to follow Lundgren's teachings.
Frost's decision allows Lundgren to join a 2004 lawsuit brought by death row inmate Richard Cooey, convicted of the rape and murder of two University of Akron students in 1986.
Cooey argues that the way chemicals used in lethal injection are administered makes the process painful enough to amount to cruel and unusual punishment, in violation of the constitution.
Four other inmates had previously joined the lawsuit.

2006-09-03T22:06:00.000-07:00

Ford puts Aston Martin up for sale

Aston Martin, the icon of luxury sports cars made famous in James Bond movies, has been put up for sale by the struggling Ford Motor Co., the company said Thursday.
Ford said in a statement that it is exploring the sale of all or part of the British-based carmaker, in part to raise capital for its other brands.
British-based Aston Martin makes about 5,000 cars a year. They cost upward of $100,000 each.
"As part of our ongoing strategic review, we have determined that Aston Martin may be an attractive opportunity to raise capital and generate value," Bill Ford, the automaker's chairman and chief executive, said in a statement.
He said the Aston Martin's dealer network, design and size are different from other Ford brands and the most logical choice for possible sale.
Ford said no decisions have been made about its other luxury car brands, which include Jaguar, Land Rover and Volvo.
"We continue to be encouraged by Jaguar's progress and by the strength and consumer appeal of the Jaguar, Land Rover and Volvo product lineups" Bill Ford said.
But Ford spokesman Tom Hoyt said that doesn't mean the company won't sell the brands.
"We're still taking a look at all aspects of the business, as Bill Ford has said. Everything's on the table," Hoyt said.
Ford shares rose 10 cents to close at $8.37 on the New York Stock Exchange.
Aston Martin has its headquarters, research and production facilities in Gaydon, England. Last month the company celebrated production of its 30,000th car.
Ford bought 75 percent of the company in 1987 and acquired full ownership in 1994, Hoyt said. In 1992, the company made only 46 vehicles, he said, but it now makes about 5,000 cars per year.
He declined to reveal a potential sales price.
Kip Penniman, an analyst with KDP Investment Advisors in Montpelier, Vt., said any sale of Aston Martin would be more about Ford trying to focus on its core brands rather than raising capital.
"They're certainly not desperate for capital," he said. "I think what they're trying to do is pare down their product portfolio so they can achieve a better focus on the brands that are their mainstays."
At the end of June, Ford reported having $23.6 billion in cash.
Penniman said Ford does not report Aston Martin earnings separately from its own, so it would be difficult to judge how much the company contributes to Ford's bottom line. But the amount would be "immaterial," he said.
The sale makes sense because Aston Martin vehicles have unique platforms and don't share many features with other Ford vehicles, Penniman said. The downside is that a lot of technology comes from development of high-end vehicles, he said.
Aston Martin models sell for $110,000 to $175,000 in the United States.
In Britain, Dave Osborne, the Transport and General Workers Union's national secretary for the car industry, said the union's priority remains safeguarding members' jobs while the future for Aston Martin is under review.
"We understand that consideration of the sale of Aston Martin is part of Ford's strategic review, where all options are on the table but no decisions have yet been made," he said. "Aston Martin is an iconic brand and is rightly prized by Ford."
In July, Ford pledged to speed up and possibly deepen its North American turnaround plan.
Dearborn-based Ford's "Way Forward" plan, launched in January, calls for shedding 25,000 to 30,000 jobs and closing 14 plants by 2012 to help return its North American automotive operations to profitability.
The company may offer buyouts and early retirement packages to more of its production workers to reduce its hourly work force, and it also is considering sale of its credit arm.
Details on further cuts are expected after a September 14 board meeting

2006-09-03T22:04:00.000-07:00

Australia-China uranium trade

Australian uranium exports to China could begin early next year, with Australia expected to capture about one third of the growing Chinese uranium market, a government official said Monday.
John Carlson, director-general of the Australian Safeguards and Nonproliferation Office, said government-to-government agreements to allow the export of Australian uranium to China should be ratified by the end of this year.
He said no commercial contracts had yet been signed between Australian miners and Chinese nuclear generators.
"In principle, we could have uranium going to China in the first half of next year," Carlson told a government committee that is investigating the trade agreements.
Carlson said he expected China would diversify its suppliers so that it would not become too dependent on a single country.
But Australia, which has 40 percent of the world's known uranium reserves, could expect to be supplying a third of the 8,000 tons of uranium a year that Beijing expects to be using to fuel its nuclear power generation by 2020, he said.
At current spot prices, that would be worth about Aust. $250 million ($192 million) a year, he said.
"It would be a reasonable objective for Australia to secure around a third of the Chinese market," Carlson said.
"In excess of 2,500 tons of uranium a year, that would be a reasonable expectation for us to be exporting to China," he added.
Carlson said he was confident the trade agreements would meet Australia's conditions that Australian uranium would only be used for power generation and would not be put to any military use.

** PJ **

The Orion Nebula

PJ